Psycho Montage III (The Mirror)

1978

Stezaker, John

"The pair of collages subtitled 'The Mirror' belongs to a series based on stills from Alfred Hitchcock's film 'Psycho', (entitled 'Psychomontage'). The pair of collages addresses the moment in which Marrion's sister (her narrative double), while searching for her sister, encounters a reflection of herself in the mirror of the dresser in the mysterious house on the hill. It is the moment of shock encounter with the doppelganger.
The series proceeds as a series of splits starting with 'Psychomontage I and II' (The View/The Window). In the third (The Mirror) the split becomes a pair of collages. The remaining series follows other spaces of transition within the home or domestic space; the door, the bed. The series as a whole is a homage to Hitchcock's montage technique, as well as to Bachelard's 'poetics of space'. I wanted to adopt the images that Hitchcock used to create a sinister sense of domestic space, but put them to the service of Bachelardian reverie."
John Stezaker

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